by David SchicklerMy general process of reading short story collections is: read the first story, hopefully the second, then skip ahead to the story I've seen already published that made me buy the book, then skip to a random story, then eventually leave the book on the shelf in the bathroom where I'll pretend that someday I'll finish it while I've got nothing better to be reading. Usually I really love one short story (usually the one I read somewhere else already) and I wind up wishing it was a whole book, and resenting the rest of the stories for not being a continuation of the one story I liked.Kissing in Manhattan came to me in much this same fashion. A colleague at work was teaching the story "The Smoker" in her class last week. When I ran into her, she was bubbling, having forgotten how good the story was since the last time she'd read it, and then she even went so far as to say that she'd thought of me while re-reading it the night before. We often swap reviews on stories, and this is high praise, so I immediately read the story on the New Yorker's website and was not disappointed. "The Smoker" is a charming little story about Douglas, a 12th Grade AP English teacher at an all-girls school in Manhattan, and his student Nicole, who has fallen for him. She eventually invites him to have dinner with her parents, as a thank you for a Letter of Recommendation to Princeton, and once there, Nicole's parents make Douglas a rather surprising proposition (I won't give it away). Anyway, it was a phenomenally funny and touching story - and sentimental in a way that you don't get much anymore. Feeling in need of some sentiment to wash off the residue of American Psycho, I rushed out that afternoon and picked up Schickler's whole collection.Immediately, I worried. What if the rest of the stories were different? Surely they all couldn't be about Douglas and Nicole, and secretly I knew I just wanted to read a whole novel about the two of them, as per usual. But I decided that perhaps there would be new stories, new characters, that I would topple for. Fortunately, I did. The first story almost threw me off: "Checkers and Donna" - a story about a terrible first date between self-important, spoiled Donna and a cavalier gentleman who actually is named Checkers. I didn't like either of them, though I did enjoy the unexpected turns in their little first date. "Where are Douglas and Nicole?" I began to cry. But the next story "Jacob's Bath" was enough to sweep me back off my feet again. It opens with a young guy, Jacob, getting married to Rachel, and feeling rather disconnected from the ceremony. We follow them to their honeymoon, where Jacob is accidentally sprayed by a skunk and Rachel gives him a bath. Thus begins a long tradition that goes all the way through their turbulent marriage, where Rachel bathes her husband each and every night. The ritual gets them through affairs and through deaths in the family. Finally the legend gets out when an elderly Rachel finally confesses to her love-scorned friend, and things are very nearly spoiled by the publicity that ensues. Again - original, sweet, and true.Instead of skipping ahead to find "The Smoker," I stuck around to read the third story "Fourth Angry Mouse" which appealed immensely to the former actor in me. Things began to get strange with "The Opals" a story about a man who finds a secret jewelry shop in the basement of a sex emporium, where he is given mystical earrings to give to his future wife. It reminded me of a series I read when I was a kid, where a boy gets a dragon's egg from a mysterious shop that he can't ever find again. But OK, everyone is entitled to a little mystical junk, right? I moved on to "Kissing in Manhattan," the title story itself...Here, things began to get strange. But not in a terrible way, exactly. The story is about another young woman, this time named Rally, who meets a handsome stockbroker named Patrick, who will turn out to be utterly insane... wait... didn't I just read American Psycho? Rather than slice up his girlfriends, this story's Patrick buys his dates expensive clothing, slices it off of them, and then makes them stare at themselves in the mirror for hours, until they can "see what he sees." Strange, but yet, at this point I trust Schickler to pull this all off somehow.Lo and behold... the very next story, "Duty", is told from Patrick's POV, with a great back story about how he came to be such a weirdo. This is the first major overlap between stories, though I had already noticed that many of the other characters lived in the same apartment building "The Preemption" and went to the same couple of restaurants and clubs as each other. Next came "The Smoker", which I found myself skipping, rather than re-reading, because I was so curious to see if there was more about Patrick. I did note that the whole story has a somewhat more chilling feel to it, when you think that somewhere just down the hall in The Preemption, where Douglas and Nicole are dining with her parents, Patrick is slicing the clothes off another woman. The remaining four stories all indeed continue the story of Patrick, as his roommate James falls in love with Rally and he becomes (insanely) jealous and threatens to kill everyone involved. A priest gets involved and everything ends with an unexpectedly dramatic little climax. I almost felt that these last stories could have been one complete little novella. Plot-wise, they don't entirely stand on their own, at least it's hard to imagine any of these being published in the New Yorker without the others around it. But he does switch perspectives between stories and give more and more background about the central characters. Ultimately, I was happy to have read it all the way through, and really startled at how cool I found these interlinking stories. It's not a style you see a lot anymore... I don't actually know if I've read any since my Senior workshop days. And yes, there was that nagging bit in me saying, "Well geez, if you're going to have all these interlinking stories, why NOT make them about Douglas and Nicole and not this Psycho Patrick?" Still, I enjoyed it from start to finish and found I couldn't wait to pick it up again, which is a rare thing for me and a short story collection.PS - All these reviews and more at my BookBlog - http://perpetualshotgun.blogspot.com/
While it is obviously unfair to blame a writer for his overzealous marketing team, it’s still worth pointing out that the back cover of this book states: “Kissing In Manhattan is the reason you learned to read.”Wow.I thought I learned to read so that I could catch the right bus or take the right motorway turning and not accidentally end up in John O’Groats. I thought I learned to read so that I could decipher the menu in restaurants and not randomly order chopped liver. Even if my mad reading skillz were only devoted to books, I’d name a few hundred authors worthier than Schickler that make reading a transcendent experience.But anyway.In this collection of short stories, the characters all exist in approximately the same bubble of experience: they have connections with the same apartment complex, frequent the same restaurant and read the same newspaper columnist. Three characters are given a storyline that spans mutiple stories, which bestows a novel-esque quality on the book. Don't expect the easy narrative of a novel, though. The real lynchpin of the book is Schickler's twisted, fantastical city; the stories merely swirl around it in a non-linear way.The stories mostly concern heterosexual relationships, but, rather than romance, Schickler seems more interested in domination and submission. One character in particular has a D/s kink, but the theme runs throughout the entire book. In Schickler’s universe, women don’t just want to be dominated – submission is the only thing that can satisfy them.I’m no great hater of D/s in fiction – in fact, done right, it can be pretty hot – but the way Schickler presents it, I found deeply disquieting. In the explicit D/s, there’s very little given in the form of consent by the women. Maybe it takes away from the fantasy to have the characters plainly discuss what they’re going to do in bed, but my brain just kept screaming, “safewords! safewords!” :/ The non-explicit D/s simply struck me as too close to old-fashioned sexism. Similarly, I found it difficult to enjoy the relationship between the older male teacher and younger female student, because it’s so clearly coded as a relationship where the woman has no power.(Note to Schickler: most couples roleplay D/s; they don’t take it as a motif for living.) Schickler has a clipped, precise style that is well-suited to short stories. The characters are well-drawn, the dialogue snappy and the universe neatly-constructed. However, there’s a lack of warmth in these stories. Schickler’s universe is fully-formed, but not especially prone to beauty or affection.I give this book 3 stars because it’s technically accomplished. However, I put it aside with a slight shudder and hope to banish it from my brain fairly quickly.
What do You think about Kissing In Manhattan (2002)?
First stumbled on this book when a friend told me I had to read "The Smoker." I loved the story, so I read the rest of the book, and loved it as well. The last two stories, and therefore the ending, I could probably live without, but overall I really enjoy the book. I just finished reading it for the second time, and I think I enjoyed it more.The beginning of the book is more funny and quirky, and it gets a little more dark and serious toward the end. Some of the aspects that other reviewers hated, I enjoyed--the fact that all the characters from the other stories show up at Patrick's parties and the quirky, simplistic descriptions of the characters. David Schickler's no O. Henry, but I think these stories (and this book) are pretty great.
—Kurt Sevits
In the end, I give this book 5 stars because of its inventiveness and general absurdity of the characters that just works in weaving interrelated stories into a coherent plot. David Schickler is in the same class of writers as a Bret Eason Ellis and Chuck Palahniuk. He unabashedly writes how aggression leads to sexual attraction but he does it in such a way that it is absurd to think his scenarios can actually happen in real life. At least, he gives equal attention on female assertiveness in sex
—Patrick
I was tempted to give this book one star, but that just felt mean. The characters felt mainly one-dimensional, with a forced quirkiness that felt born of the sort of exercise you’d be assigned in a beginning creative writing class (Patrick drinking only Old Fashioneds, etc.) These characters’ eccentricities induced a lot of eye-rolling, particularly given that there wasn’t much to them beyond their tics. The story arc was pure Hollywood, riddled with saccharin New York clichés about love and longing, and the ending was downright maudlin. I gave it two stars for its “fun” factor—-it’s a good beach read in that it doesn’t require a lot of you. But if you want to read a NYC story that actually has depth and heart and transcendence and all the things Schickler strove for but didn’t quite reach, read Rick Moody’s novella, “The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven” instead.
—Jacquie
